Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas

In 1868, at the Brussels Congress of the International Workingmen’s Association (the “International”), César De Paepe, on behalf of the Belgian section, put forward the idea that the workers’ “societies of resistance,” or trade union organizations, constituted the “embryo” of the future socialist society based on workers’ self-management. This idea was to have enormous influence in the International, and led to the development of what would now be described as anarcho-syndicalism. In February 1869, the Belgian section published a pamphlet by De Paepe, “The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future,” which developed this idea in more detail, this time focusing on the International’s constitutive workers’ organizations as the building blocks for the society of the future. De Paepe’s pamphlet was reprinted in various Internationalist papers, and translated into Spanish by the Spanish Federation. Similar ideas were expressed and adopted by the French Internationalists, with Eugène Varlin writing that trade union organizations “form the natural elements of the social edifice of the future.” Bakunin agreed with this approach, arguing that the trade union sections “bear in themselves the living seeds of the new society which is to replace the old world.” Marx and Engels derided this approach, claiming it would introduce “anarchy,” in the pejorative sense, into the ranks of the workers, rendering them incapable of combatting the counter-revolution (for the details, see my book, ‘We Do Not Fear Anarchy – We Invoke It” – The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement).

It is with great pleasure then that I present Shawn Wilbur’s translation of De Paepe’s pamphlet. It is a welcome antidote to Marcello Musto’s anthology, Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later, from which De Paepe’s pamphlet is notably absent (for an excellent critique of Musto’s book, see Iain McKay’s review essay). Contrary to Musto’s general analysis, De Paepe’s pamphlet illustrates the degree to which Proudhon’s mutualist ideas continued to play an influential role within the debates in the International, despite the declining influence within the International of his more conservative adherents, such as Henri Tolain. De Paepe argues first and foremost for a federalist form of organization, in which higher level committees simply do the bidding of the sections’ members. Whereas Marx supported the General Council of the International having executive powers over the sections, and consistently opposed attempts to comprise the Council as a Council of delegates, subject to imperative mandates and recall, De Paepe, consistent with Proudhon’s federalist ideas, advocates that the General Council should be only an administrative, not a governing, body. De Paepe, as with Proudhon, also supports the creation of a variety of self-managed workers’ organizations separate and apart from existing political institutions, not simply trade unions and societies of resistance, but also mutual aid societies, worker and consumer cooperatives, and worker controlled integral education. It is these workers’ organizations that are to provide the basis for the future socialist society based on worker self-management.

With respect to socialism itself, De Paepe advocates a form of socialism based on Proudhon’s, not Marx’s, conception of socialism. It is a form of socialism based on the exchange between the workers themselves, without any capitalist intermediaries to exploit them, of products and services of equivalent value, with credit being available at “cost-price,” coordinated through a Bank of Exchange. Marx’s derided this form of socialism (exchange without exploitation) in his unfair critique of Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy (see Iain McKay’s essay, “Proudhon’s Constituted Value and the Myth of Labour Notes”). Finally, De Paepe envisages the gradual hollowing out of existing institutions by the workers’ organizations, resulting in the collapse of those institutions “with a sigh,” without the need for a violent revolution, which is also what Proudhon advocated.

The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future

The International Workingmen’sAssociation bears social regeneration within itself.

There are many who agree that if the Association should realize its program, it will have effectively established the reign of justice, but who believe that certain present institutions of the International are only temporary and are destined to disappear. We want to show that the International already offers the model of the society to come and that its various institutions, with the required modifications, will form the future social order.

So let us examine the structures in which the association currently presents itself, taking its most complete examples, for a great number of sections have still not arrived at a perfect organization.

The section is the model of the commune. There the workers of all trades are gathered without distinction. There we must address the affairs that concern all the workers, whatever their profession.

At the head of the section is an Administrative Committee, which is charged with carrying out the measures decreed by the section. Instead of commanding, like the present administrations, it obeys the citizens.

The Federal Council is composed of the delegates of different worker groups; to it [are assigned] questions of relations between the different trades and of the organization of labor. This is a gap in our present governments, which only represent a confused rabble of individuals instead of representing groups united by interests.

The different societies gathered in the Federal Council are societies of resistance. These societies also belong as much to the future as to the present. Gathering around them the workers of a single trade, teaching them their interests, to calculate the sale price and cost price in order to base their expectations on it, the society of resistance is destined to organize labor in the future, much more than the society of production, which, in the present state, can hardly be expanded. Nothing will be more easy, when the moment comes, than to transform the societies of resistance into cooperative workshops, when the workers have agreed to demand the liquidation of the present society, which bankrupts them perpetually.

The cooperative consumer societies, which are established in the majority of sections, are destined one day to replace the present commerce, full of frauds and pitfalls; they will transform themselves into communal bazaars, where the different products will be displayed with exact indication of the consignments, without any other surcharge but the payment of the costs.

The mutual assistance and provident funds, will take on a wider expansion and become societies of universal insurance. Sickness, disability, old age, widowhood and all these present sources of poverty will be swept away. No more charity office, public assistance dishonored; no more hospitals where one is admitted on charity. All the care that one will receive will have been paid for; there will no longer be doctors for the poor.

Ignorance, that other source of poverty, will disappear in the face of the education given by each section. It is not a question of that training that even our doctrinaires demand in loud cries. We want to make men, and one is only a complete man when one is a laborer and scholar at the same time; and have not all the workers gathered at the Congress of Brussels last September demanded integral education that includes science apprenticeship in the trades. That instruction being presently impossible, as a result of material impediments, the sections compensate as best they can, by organizing meetings and conferences, by founding newspapers, where the workers are taught the rights of man, where they are taught to claim them, where finally we assemble the materials for the edifice of the future society.

The problem of the organization of justice is already resolved within the International. The defense funds will accomplish that aim. They have their current relevance, in the sense that having examined the case, the Defense Committee decides if the affair will be upheld in justice, when a worker has to complain of an injustice committed by their boss. But that institution also looks toward the future, in that it decides contestations between members by means of a jury chosen by election and rapidly renewable. In the future, no more quibblers, judges, prosecutors or attorneys. The same rights for all and justice based, no longer on some more or less muddled text, about which we quarrel, but on reason and rectitude.

The different sections are connected in their turn by federation, by basins, then by country. These federations include not only a grouping by sections, but also by trades, as that exists in the communes. So the relations between the different groups will be facilitated and labor can be organized, not only within the communes, but within the entire country.

Vast institutions of credit will be like the veins and arteries of that organization. Credit will no longer be what it is today, an instrument of death, for it will be based on equal exchange: it will be credit at cost-price.

If the International has not yet been able, in its present state, to establish an institution of this sort, at least it has already discussed its principles and statutes at the Congresses of Lausanne and Brussels. At that latest Congress, a plan for a bank of exchange has been presented by the Brussels section.

Finally, the relations between the different countries are dealt with by an international General Council. Such will be the future diplomacy: no more embassy attachés, no more smartly dressed diplomatic secretaries, no more diplomats, protocols or wars.

A central office of correspondence, information and statistics would be all that is necessary to connect the nations united by a fraternal bond.

We now believe that we have shown that the International contains within itself the seeds of all the institutions of the future. Let a section of the International be established in each commune; the new society will be formed and the old will collapse with a sigh. Thus, when a wound heals, we see a sore form above while the flesh slowly settles itself below. One fine day, the scab falls off, and the flesh appears fresh and ruddy.

Just to say I am enjoying your blog. I was an anarchist as a student in the anti Vietnam War years, and still am in theory though I’ve done nothing about it in half a century of (blue collar) work and family.

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